How Depriving Yourself Only Makes Things Worse

You’ve been depriving yourself of certain types of foods for a long time. And when you have allowed yourself to eat them, you’ve probably beat yourself up about it before, during, and after.

So the thought of eating whatever you want, whenever you want, can bring up a lot of fear:

(“But if I only eat what I want, I’ll just eat pizza and ice cream foreverrrrr!!”)

You might even wonder if you’re addicted to sugar or carbs.

It’s true that it can feel like an uncontrollable frenzy if you’re new to this “eating whatever you want” business, but here’s the truth: you are not addicted.

The fact that you’ve continuously told yourself that these foods aren’t okay is precisely the reason you feel “out of control” around them.

This is just your brain working a little reverse psychology on you.

When you tell yourself that a certain food is OUT; when you remind yourself of the diet you’re about to start; when you think about restricting what you eat, now or in the future – THAT is when the “can’t get enough” feeling starts.

Welcome to your Sunday-night-before-the-diet-starts-binge: get it all in before it’s too late!

So yes, when you start allowing yourself to eat things that sound good to you (without the threat of the next diet looming overhead!), you might go a little crazy on your “bad” foods.

Let it happen. This is a necessary part of the binge eating recovery process!

Notice how you feel, what you like, and what you don’t like.

Don’t judge or shame your choices.

Be curious, open, and gentle with yourself.

I promise, youwill not eat ONLY cookies forever. But you have to trust the process if you’re going to start laying a new foundation for your relationship with your food, your body, and yourself.

And it starts with you giving your subconscious the message that food will not make or break you. You do this through consistent ACTIONS. By stopping the cycle of deprivation.

There’s no point in having a conversation about health until you start building this trust with yourself.

Let your body know that it can trust you to nourish and feed it, every day, forever.